1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a peripheral device and a system for grasping and managing an access state of a storage medium.
2. Related Art
In recent years, peripheral devices incorporating various devices such as a digital camera, cellular phone and scanner, and various storage media for storing image data taken or captured by the above devices such as a flash memory card and universal serial bus (herein after referred to as USB) memory have been developed. The peripheral device may read out image data from a storage medium or the like and print the image, or store scanned image data in a storage medium or the like. Some peripheral devices are connectable to a personal computer (hereinafter referred to as PC). When a peripheral device is connected to a PC, a storage medium or the like mounted in the peripheral device may be recognized as a removable disk. By accessing the storage medium from the PC, image data may be written onto the storage medium, or image data stored in the storage medium may be read out.
It is known that, when a printer device performs printing on the basis of image data from a PC, the printer device allows the data from the PC to be directly output to a printer engine via a USB bus. This allows the PC to exchange data and signals directly with the printer engine to perform printing.
In a known photo-direct printer device image data from the PC is output to the printer engine via the USB bus to print the image data. The term USB refers to a type of serial bus for providing a connection between a PC and peripheral devices. Communication data is sent in packets, allowing a plurality of devices to be connected to one bus and simultaneously access each other in a timeshared method. In the known photo-direct printer device, the PC and the printer engine are connected in accordance with the normal USB bus standard.
Therefore, if access is performed between a PC and a storage medium while the PC is sending image data to a printer engine to perform printing, transmission of the image data to the printer engine and the access to the storage medium may be performed in a timeshared method. As a result, transfer speed of the image data to the printer engine may decrease. This may require more time to process the printing, and thus may delay completion of the printing.
Also due to the time-shared data transfer via the USB, scan data may be sent to the PC in a timeshared method, extension of image reading time of a peripheral device may be occurred.